sque and interesting town,
and its electoral district made a gallant stand for liberty and order in
the elections. It gave nearly 9,000 Monarchist against about 11,000
Republican votes, and the returns of the whole Department of the Gard,
when compared with those of 1885, show a marked change to the
disadvantage of the powers that be. In the first place the total of the
votes polled fell off more than 10 per cent. in 1889 from the total in
1885. In 1885, 110,786 were polled. In 1889, 97,828. In the next place
the Republican votes in the whole department fell off in 1889 nearly 20
per cent. from the Republican total in 1885, or from 58,328 to 46,323.
In the third place the Republican majority over the Monarchists fell off
more than 60 per cent. from the majority in 1885, or from 5,910 to
2,062. In the fourth place the Monarchists in the first district of
Nimes had a majority of more than 1,500 votes over the Government
Republicans. And in the fifth place the Republicans, who in 1885 secured
the whole delegation of six members from the Gard, in 1889 lost the seat
for the second district of Alais, which the Monarchists carried by a
majority of 1,305 votes over the combined strength of the Government
Republicans and the Boulangist Revisionists. This district is a coal and
iron-mining as well as a silk-growing district. It is fall of workmen,
and it has been a point of attack for the Socialist and subversive
leaders in France for many years past. All the traditions of Alais
itself are strongly Protestant. The fortifications of the town were
destroyed by Louis XIV. at the end of the seventeenth century, and at no
great distance is the Tour du Bellot, the lonely spot which witnessed
one of the most desperate conflicts between Cavalier and the royal
troops. The slaughter of the Camisards, shut up in their burning tower,
is a tale of horror still in the countryside. At Nimes the memories of
the long and merciless strife between the Catholics and the Protestants
of Southern France are fresher still and more intense. M. Guillaume
Guizot well remembers the bitterness of the passions roused at Nimes by
the local struggles between the 'two Religions' which followed the
Restoration. His father was one day reasoning on the subject with a
Protestant citizen of Nimes, who suddenly pointed to a man passing on
the other side of the street, and said: 'That man had a hand in the
killing of my father here in the streets of Nimes. How can you as